AT&T willing to give T-Mobile customers $450 in credit to switch

AT&T announced on Friday that it will give T-Mobile customers as much as $450 in credit to switch carriers.

AT&T announced on Friday that it will give T-Mobile customers as much as $450 in credit to switch carriers. (AT&T)

Salvador Rodriguez

T-Mobile gained quite a few new customers in 2013 with a handful of bold moves, but on Friday, AT&T announced a bold move of its own by promising to give T-Mobile customers who switch carriers as much as $450 in credit.

AT&T said it will give customers who trade in their T-Mobile smartphones as much as $250 in credit, depending on the kind of device they have and its condition. Customers can gain an additional $200 in credit when they switch their wireless service from T-Mobile and sign up for an AT&T Next plan.

Customers hoping to get $200 for switching to an AT&T Next plan will have to purchase a new device from AT&T at retail price or bring in a device of their own that is capable of working with the Texas carrier's network.

"In addition to a larger and more reliable 4G LTE network, T-Mobile customers who switch to AT&T will benefit from a superior smartphone line-up and award-winning customer service," AT&T said in a statement Friday.

Besides making the announcement, AT&T also said interested T-Mobile customers can get more information by heading to www.att.com/switchfromtmo.

The move comes after T-Mobile made a number of customer-friendly changes in 2013 that may have cost AT&T a painful amount of wireless users.

In 2013, T-Mobile said it will no longer tie customers to contracts and it set up a plan called Jump that users can sign up for to switch smartphones more frequently than once every two years, among other notable changes. Meanwhile, AT&T and others often ended up following T-Mobile's lead in these changes.